Hi-Larry-ity #2: 5 Ways VBS Scarred Me As A Kid

It’s VBS time around the land. School is out. It’ time for this time-honored tradition to return. Churches will be having VBS over the next few weeks. My daughter is working in not one, but two VBS type events. I may even make my way over to one after work for a couple of nights.

Here’s the thing, though. VBS doesn’t have a warm and fuzzy place in my heart. I appreciate the fact that it was there when I was a kid, but I went for a few years when I was kid. The effect was that I was glad when I began playing baseball and had games that week. I was scarred by it. Here are the five ways that happened:

1. Green Kool-Aid.

I never understood why we always had green Kool-Aid in VBS every year. I never knew anyone that made the green flavor in real life. None of my friends ever had green Kool-Aid at home. How did this happen? Did the Kool-Aid company run a special every year just for VBS? Did parents buy this throughout the year, only to donate it at VBS time so they could clear out their cupboards? I don’t know the answers to these important questions.

2. Fake Oreos

We didn’t have the real Oreos in VBS. We had the fake ones. You know the kind I’m talking about. They were a cream filled cookie, but they weren’t quite as hard as an Oreo. The cream wasn’t nearly as good. They were definitely an inferior cookie to the Oreo. Churches were giving inferior knock-offs to the Lord’s kids. Didn’t we deserve to have the best?

3. Crafts

I understand now that the teachers needed a break. After all, they were dealing with kids hyped up on green Kool-Aid and fake oreos. But really, how many fake leather-bound Bibles made out of soap did I really need? After two or three of those sitting in my drawer for a year, my bedroom smelled like soap. I just wanted to toss them out, but was I allowed to? Were the VBS police going to check up on whether or not I still had mine. I just really didn’t know what to do with it.

4. Games

We played kickball at recess at school. We played dodgeball. What did we play at VBS? Red Rover. I really didn’t want to come over. There were girls over there. They tried to clothesline me. Of course, once I got tired of that happening, there was that incident where I got banned from playing Red Rover anymore. I mean, didn’t they want me to try? If the girls could clothesline me, couldn’t I run them over? Yeah, they didn’t want me coming over anymore.

5. Assembly

I always hated singing as kid. I got kind of tired of Deep and Wide with all of those hand motions. This Little Light Of Mine? I didn’t know what a bushel was, how could I have hidden it under one anyway? Plus, I didn’t have any problem saying the pledge to the American flag, but the others? I never could get the pledge to the Christian flag down. And I was pledging to the Bible too? We never said these pledges any other time than VBS. How was I supposed to remember them? Why were the teachers looking at me funny by this point in the assembly? It was just too much. I ended up just standing there pretending to say the pledges.

There you have it folks. VBS scarred me as a kid. I’ve never gotten over it to this day. Which is why I have this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach to this day.

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I was raised Catholic – never had the “pleasure” of VBS, or green Kool-Aid (being raised in Massachusetts, we had a product – equally vile, I’m sure – called Za-Rex). The fake oreos? Could have been caused by humidity…naaah. The rest? Priceless.

Well done, sir – this stands in pretty sharp color contrast to my latest, and I needed the mood lightener. You, sir, are a blessing 🙂

Puppets. Need I say more. We also had Doug Bucks, which was fake money with our preacher Doug Sager on it that we got for saying our Bible verses, coming every day, bringing a friend, that kind of stuff.